


Their father's sons

by redshadowalchemist



Series: The three sons of Hohenheim [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Homunculi, Human Transmutation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26072713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redshadowalchemist/pseuds/redshadowalchemist
Summary: “I expected this ever since I heard she had died, they are the sons of Hohenheim after all"-Dante.Or, Envy, Ed and Al from the period between Trisha's death to Sloth's birth.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric & Envy, Alphonse Elric & Envy, Edward Elric & Envy
Series: The three sons of Hohenheim [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1891093
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Their father's sons

Envy can't find his brothers. He has been away two months now, working for Dante, he cannot always get away without attracting suspicion.

No one is home. The lamps are all out, there is no wood in the fireplace, there is dust and cobwebs everywhere. Ed and Al are not there, nor are they are not playing in the fields,they are not at the school house, or Rockbell's automail shop. Envy is worried for the first time in his life. And where is their mother?

He wanders around Resembool trying to find them until finally he spots two golden heads. He runs up to them. Then he realises where they are. A cemetery.

Ed and Al are asleep curled up together but shivering despite it, tears on their cheeks. He reads the grave stone TRISHA ELRIC. Envy had no affection for Trisha but he is annoyed she has died, now his brothers are orphans, in practice if not in reality. Hohenheim still isn't here and he himself can do nothing for them without bringing them further to Dante's attention. 

Envy sighs not wanting to leave them here where they will get cold and sick. Humans are so fragile after all, sometimes he thinks he is better off as he is. Other times he wants nothing more than to have a soul, to have what they have. He lifts both boys up one over each shoulder, they do not wake up which shows how tired they must be. They are lighter than they should be, Ed who has always been smaller despite being the elder cannot afford to lose weight and even Alphonse who has always been more sturdily built is noticeably thinner.

Envy carries them back to the house. He puts Ed and Al in bed together and pulled that bed in front of a fire which he lights after multiple frustrating attempts, he's never had to light a fire before. William knew how to do it, sometimes alchemical ingredients need heating up, but Envy hasn't done it himself so it takes a while to work out exactly how to do it.

He decides they need to eat and tries to make something hot, then he realises he doesn't know how to cook, raised on red stones he's never eaten human food. William never cooked either, spoiled by his mother she had made all his food, which had killed him in the end when Dante or Hohenheim slipped in the elixir, he makes a mental note to make sure Ed and Al know how to cook. Envy has seen people make soup, that can't be too hard to he heats up some water and throws in some random vegetables. He figures it will do to warm them up. At the very least it won't poison them.

Alphonse stirs first, he opens his eyes and looks around in panic, probably in shock at the change in surroundings he shakes Edward awake with a simple "brother". Edward jumps at Alphonse's distressed call. 

“It's ok it's only me” Envy tells them.  
“Will I...” Tears fill Ed's eyes and Envy finds himself holding the two boys. He's only known them for a short time but they have changed him. With everyone else he is as cruel as ever but with Ed and Al it's different.

He wants to take them with him...he can't he knows he can't he knows what Dante would do to them. He can't protect them.

He feeds them and finally they stop shivering he manages to tease information out of them, how one day they came home and found their mother on the floor, how she got sicker and sicker. How they wrote letters to everyone in Hohenheim's study hoping to contact him, it was all their mother wanted...but he didn't come. They tell him about the Rockbell's Winry, the little girl he sometimes sees with Ed and Al and her grandmother Pinako, how they feed them and care for them. The boys won't be left to starve. They should probably have more supervision but they will be fine.

He visits more and more regularly, just to make sure. Ed and Al live alone but with the help of the Rockbell's they function reasonably well. They go to study alchemy under a woman named Izumi. A woman who Envy noticed can perform alchemy by clapping her hands, another idiot like Hohenheim. But he says nothing. He wonders what happened to the thing she created, Envy, Greed and Pride were all created by Dante, but other homunculi have come, Gluttony and Lust most notably, they have no Wrath yet, or Sloth. Which one did she create he wonders? Still he doesn't say anything either to her or the boys. No need to attract the suspicion of a clearly gifted alchemist. One who Dante, had trained, he wonders if Dante set Izumi up, it wouldn't surprise him. 

With the boys in Dublith he sees them less though he still drops by making sure Izumi does not see him. A few days before Ed's tenth birthday Envy visits them in the Southern city, he brings the constantly hungry Ed some sweets and an alchemy book. He steals them from Dante's library they were Hohenheim's since he is gone his sons may as well have them and Envy has no interest so he gives them to his brothers. Ed smiles at Envy he seems happier than he has been since his mother died, even though it has now been almost four years. Envy voices this and Ed laughs and tells him he is going to fix everything. Envy doesn't ask what he means, he assumes wrongly that Ed means he's going to become a powerful alchemist and provide for himself and Alphonse.

Later he will wish he had told Ed who he really is, later he will wish he confronted Izumi, later he will wish he asked Ed what he meant by fixing everything. But it will be too late.

It is Dante who sends him to Resembool this time. If she knows Hohenheim had taken up with Trisha Elric she probably knows about the boys too. Though not Envy's involvement. So why is she sending him. 

"Just look" she tells him and gives him an address, Edward and Alphonse's address. 

Envy runs. Either Dante wants the boys for something or something horrible has happened to them. Envy isn't sure which is worse. 

He opens the door to their house no one is there, he searches the rooms, when he opens the study of that bastard Hohenheim he sees the room is disordered, the desk is pushed against the wall. There are chalk markings on the floor, there is a rotting corpse in the middle and blood everywhere. He knows those markings, etched in his brain since the first day.

Ed's last words to him echo in his head “I'm going to fix everything.” If physically capable of it Envy would have been sick. Ed, and he is sure it was Ed who did this, Al may have gone along with it but he would never have thought of it himself. Is just like the bastard that abandoned them.

He gathers up Sloth, or what will become Sloth and brings her to Dante, so she can make the newest homunculus at least partially functional, then he tells her what Ed, and possibly Al have done. He still doesn't tell her for the past five years he has been visiting them as their brother.

He deliberately doesn't wonder if Ed and Al are alive. Few alchemists survive human transmutation and of those that do most are destroyed both mentally and physically. He doesn't think about it. 

He had loved them, or if not loved them then at least as close to that emotion as a homunculus could manage. He had hoped they were better than the bastard. That they wouldn't have his arrogance, the audacity to force someone else into being who couldn't be who their creator wanted them to be. But they were just like him, and so young. Part of him hoped they were both dead. That, at least would stop them causing further damage.

Dante's words when he told her about Sloth still echo in his ears “I expected this ever since I heard she had died, they are the sons of Hohenheim after all.”


End file.
